My teaching at Dartmouth (in economic and linguistic anthropology and in methods of field research) has spanned over four decades (1968 – 2011). During several leaves I have also held visiting, teaching and research appointments at Princeton, Yale, and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Several courses have included practical, mini-ethnographic research by undergraduates (well outside student bubbles) among residents of elder care facilities, homeless shelters, food banks, as well as study of students' social life in dormitories, fraternities, sororities, sporting venues, and sites of other extra-curricular activities.

Since the mid-1960's, I have conducted ethnographic research in Southern Africa and in inner-cities of the Northeastern United States. Publications on these research projects span three time periods with different foci: (1) mid-1960's through mid-1980's field research and writing on African labor migration in South Africa and Botswana. My major publication on this research, "Mind in the Heart of Darkness", Yale University Press 1978, won both first prize in the University of Chicago Folklore Competition and the Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association. (2) Mid-1980's through mid-1990's socio-linguistic research on the "collocational" expression of time in four unrelated languages: English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Sesotho. (3)1990's onward, research in inner cities of the Northeastern United States, principally Hartford Connecticut, on the effects of and responses to mental health services delivered in resource poor areas among Euro-American, African American and Hispanic American clients of community-based treatment centers. For listings and citations of all major publications on these and other topics please click here.